


Landmarks

by lenija



Category: The Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-18
Updated: 2007-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenija/pseuds/lenija
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Khana, Kelpie, Chris - many thanks for the quick beta.<br/>Isagel - thanks for the request. I loved it.</p><p>Written for Isagel</p>
    </blockquote>





	Landmarks

**Author's Note:**

> Khana, Kelpie, Chris - many thanks for the quick beta.  
> Isagel - thanks for the request. I loved it.
> 
> Written for Isagel

 

 

I.

On Sharra's eleventh birthday Marlen gave her a throwing dagger. They agreed to keep the present secret from their father, and so they did. Sharra would climb all the trees in Larai Rigal then, and she would practise throwing in the gardens' most hidden corners, aiming at stones, branches and flowers, sometimes with her brother, sometimes alone. She would learn paths and plants in the gardens by heart, and pretend that she could fly over the treetops like a hawk, and then in her dreams she would fly far from the gardens and see the Brennin, Daniloth, Eridu, the whole world. Although she would always come back to tell Marlen of all her adventures.

II.

"Did you expect to come back from Cader Sedat alive?"

She hasn't planned to ask it, it just comes out of her mouth, and she is grateful he is so close to her now, his walls and masks are all down so he won't find it necessary to answer her with a poignant remark, or worse, a joke. On the other hand, she reminds herself, he said he'd never do what's expected of him, so it's good to be braced for all possible reactions.

For a moment he is silent. His long fingers lazily trace the contours of her body in the dim starlight. The wind carries voices over to them from the beach near Anor Lisen, where Diar's men are gathered around the fires, only talking now, no more mournful songs. The waves crash loudly against the shore. Sharra thinks, I have never sailed on the open sea.

"I don't work with expectations," Diar says. She turns around to see the ghost of an amused smile playing around his lips.

"Oh. I see. You'd be forced to fall short on them."

"Which would be unfortunate, especially in this case. As you know, I prefer surprises."

She laughs. "Really? I never noticed."

Oh, he can do that so well, answer honestly and still without giving away too much, she thinks, and she tells him.

He looks down at her, his eyes dark under the stars, but not so much of a mystery to her anymore, at least not as much as he used to be.

"I mean it," he says, now with a serious tone in his voice, like earlier this evening when he's told her everything that has happened on his dangerous voyage, ending with a certain admission of weakness. It means: He _is_ giving something away. "I'm not going to try and predict the future. Better make everything up as we go along, keep in mind that we can still change the course of our thread on the Loom."

"I know that you mean it," Sharra tells him, although she thinks he doesn't need her assurance, "I know," and she leans up and kisses him, letting all thoughts of the future behind them until Amairgens ship arrives at the end of the night.

III.

Sharra closes her eyes, and there are the Gardens.  
Finding them there confuses her; she would have expected battle scenarios, her hawk flying over Mount Rangat alone, advancing darkness even, but not the landscape of a childhood that lies so far behind her that the sheer memory seems faded like the writing on ancient scrolls in her father`s library.

She should have left Paras Derval by now, gone back to Cathal where she has things to do, advise her father and learn what she still needs to know about governing a country, but it's been only little more than two months since the second Bael Rangat and a few weeks since the last skirmish she's witnessed, and she just isn't ready to return home and continue her life as it was before.

Shalhassan doesn't force her. "Stay," he says, "if it helps you, but remember you have somewhere to go to, people who need you." She wonders why he's so talkative all of a sudden, as if he thought she didn't already know all this, and so understanding. It's good he accepts, though. She has no strength left to trick him and no convincing reason to do so, either.

She says goodbye to Kimberly.  
Pwyll Twiceborn - Paul - has decided to stay in Fionavar with Jaelle, the former High Priestess and Sharra puts some effort into an attempt to feel grateful for them until she can finally manage it.  
A few days later, Jaelle passes her a message from Paul, who, for some reason, wants to talk to her. She's not sure she wants to talk to anybody right now, but it would be discourteous to decline, so she agrees reluctantly and suggests to visit him at the seer's old cottage, where he's starting to build his new home now.

  
  
They meet near the lake. Paul greets her with a kind smile she finds hard to associate with the man she's got to know in the war and from Diars narrations: Mörnir's arrow, the Lord of the Summer Tree who can talk to the Gods - he's just a friend now.  
  
"How can I help you, Pwyll?" she asks politely, and he says "Actually, that's what I've been meaning to ask you, Princess Sharra. I would like to offer you my help."  
  
"Thank you," she says slowly, "but I'm not entirely sure what you mean. What do you want to help me with? I've had little to do during the last few weeks, none of my tasks have been especially demanding." Don't sound like a cynic, she reminds herself. You don't have to take on his role. She smiles. "I don't mean that as a complaint. It's just, my duties await me at home, and here-"  
  
He clears his throat. It makes him appear almost shy. "I didn't mean duties, but rather... comfort, perhaps?" He shifts uncomfortably. "I know a few things about loss. And what it can do to you."  
  
She can see it's hard for him to say this so frankly; he's not used to hiding his feelings like she is, but also not to sharing them with a virtual stranger, or even a friend.  
  
 _Loss_. Something hard in her stomach breaks into pieces (again).  
  
Paul doesn't press her. There is only as much as a very mild inquiring look in his eyes.  
  
A lump in her throat keeps her from speaking. She shakes her head and nods at the same time. It is silly to shut oneself off from the others, from friends who mean only the best for you. But she needs to settle this alone now. After having cried in Kim's arms for hours, she had to go back to holding herself together -  
  
The hawk flutters by behind her eyelids.  
  
"I'm not sure," she manages. "Is there a way to make this any easier?"  
  
He says "I don't know. Maybe not. But."  
  
Sharra closes her eyes and there are the Gardens. Not all of them, if she`s honest, only a certain part of Larai Rigal, the part she knows best, where the Lyren tree stands, loaded with connotations. Suddenly she wants to scream and cry and rip the bark from the tree`s trunk until her fingers bleed and the damned garden is empty, she wants to burn it to the ground so it won`t haunt her anymore, just leave me alone, just go, but:  
 _Pull yourself together, woman._  
  
She opens her eyes again, shoves shrubbery, woods and flowers out of the way and says: "I`m sorry Paul, I was daydreaming. What did you say?"  
  
And offering her his arm he says: "Let`s take a walk into the forest."

  
  
They stroll, pass trees and bushes, the ground is covered with fallen leaves in all colours. The scenery evokes vague memories of Sharra's frequent walks through her father's gardens, accompanied by her suitors. Very vague memories.  
They are silent until Sharra says: "It's weird, don't you think, not having a story in front of us? Lately it seems to me as if all our stories had already been told and nothing would ever happen again."  
  
Paul considers her words. Apparently he finds it hard to answer.  
  
"I know", she says. "You have begun something new, haven't you?"  
  
She remembers a night far away, long gone, it seems, a snowcovered summer. Her own words, spoken so candidly then, echo in her ears.  
 _Who else should I ever love?_  
It still sounds true to her. She can't make herself recognise a flaw in her interpretation, although it is likely to be there.  
  
"I don't know the Weaver's work as well as you do," Paul answers finally. "But things have happend before our arrival here, I believe, before all those prophecies started to become true." He's grinning, and she can see someone else behind his eyes, someone more likely to jest than he is. Someone else who's not standing here with them now.  
  
"I don't like prophecies, you know," she says with a twisted smile. "They tend to get in the way much too often."  
  
"Some get in the way of prophecies," he adds quietly. She nodds. It gets hard to hold back the tears.  
  
IV.  
  
Even Jaelle doesn't believe Sharra has never been there.  
  
"Seriously, he screamed it all over the battlefield and you never thought to ask someone what it was all about?"  
  
"I recalled Tegid mention it before, and knowing Diarmuid it was fairly obvious that the _Black Boar_ was supposed to be the name of a pub. I just never got around to asking where it was. I just. I think I forgot."  
  
"As far as I know, he practically lived there." Paul tries to make it sound like something else than an insult and fails.  
  
Despite having several reasons to feel angry, guilty and stupid, Sharra succumbs to the urge to snort with laughter. "Ohh, I can imagine that!" she gasps. "I just wish I could have been there. I would have loved to show up there one day and see his face when he'd spot me." She pictures it, and the thought makes her cry while she still can't stop laughing, tears stream like rivers down her face, her nose is running, and it feels odd and inappropriate and painful, and she really shouldn't sit here in Jaelle's kitchen like this, but she feels too weak to get up. After a while the rest of the laughter has faded into sobs. She cries into Paul's handkerchief and thinks, will it always be like this, and some long time later she stands, blows her nose, spatters some water in her face. Then she faces Paul and Jaelle and says: "Let's go there." 

 


End file.
